St. Bernardus Tripel | Brouwerij St. Bernardus NV

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5/5 rDev +17.9%look: 5 | smell: 5 | taste: 5 | feel: 5 | overall: 5

Best before 07/08/16

Served in a St. Bernardus chalice, it pours a beautiful amber orange of a golden hue, slightly hazy. It forms a one-finger head, white and foamy, with some retention. The head wanes until it becomes a thin layer of foam, which never truly disappears.
Beautiful lacing.

Lovable expressive carbonation.
It begins perfectly balanced, and both the sweetness and the bitterness are strong and discernable. Gradually, sweetness prevails, and in doing so, the notes reveal themselves.
Caramel, honey, floral note. Huge malty sweetness, biscuit. Lemon, underripe peach, apple, tamed orange zest, banana, coriander seeds, clove and white pepper.
The aftertaste has a huge herbal note that leaves a very refreshing feeling, like an iced tea; it is predominantly sweet, and oh so long.
I was fortunate enough to taste this quite chilled and then looking at the bottle to see that it was indeed the proper tasting temperature recommended by the brewery.
Medium to light body, so smooth and refreshing.
Long after this beer has gone, I still feel the herbal, floral note in my mouth, a freshening sensation, and that balance tilting towards sweetness.

This is the kind of beer that reassures you that wine can't beat beer.
Superlative tripel.

Carbonated honey with lemonade borders. The crown of foam, as expected, was massive before the first few ounces left the bottle. It's an especially regal shade of alabaster and is smoothy creamy rather than firmly rocky. Shotgun-blasted sheets of Belgian lace stick with authority. I love the look after a second pour adds a smattering of yeast to the glass.

The nose is all kinds of wonderful. Having said that, I'm not tempted to go with the big number. It's chock full of golden orchard fruit and has an ideal amount of yeasty spiciness. Just as I suspected, even a few degrees of warming opens things up beautifully.

Simply put, St. Bernardus Tripel is world-class. It doesn't happen often, but there's nothing about the flavor profile that I would change. It's as if the monks tweaked the recipe over hundreds of years until it was a model of perfectly balanced perfection. Actually, that's probably exactly what happened.

This may be the fruitiest tripel in existence. Each sip delivers a controlled explosion of buttery pears and crisp apples, sun-ripened melon and juicy pineapple. Honeyed pale malt anchors the bottom end with authority. Wrapping it all up in a neat little bow is a perfect (there's that word again) amount of clove and white pepper spiciness. It looks like Tripel Karmeliet has some competition at the top of my 'most favored tripels' list.

How can so many flavors and so many flavor sensations be present at once and how can they work so well together? Tripel is sweet and tangy and bitter and fruit and spicy... all at once. A well-crafted tripel is almost as pleasing to my taste buds as a hugely hoppy DIPA. And this is *definitely* a well-crafted tripel.

The mouthfeel falls a fraction short of perfection. It's medium for the style, with an admirable amount of silky smoothness, but it doesn't quite reach that state of effortlessly creamy expansiveness that is otherwise known as mouthfeel bliss.

Brouwerij St. Bernardus has never let me down. I've enjoyed each and every one of their creations and am especially thrilled with Tripel. It's on my short list of the world's best beers, no matter the style. I plan to stock up whenever the opportunity presents itself. Only next time I'm going for the 750s.

Appearance  The bottle blew up when I popped it but then poured with almost no head. I didnt get that. The body was light orange in color.

Smell  Strong orange syrup aroma with a touch of yeast and some summer fruits.

Taste  This yeast is subdued at the taste. The fruits are light summer such as melons, with a tangy compliment thats almost like a sprig of lemon. Theres also some traditional Belgian spicing to this one.

Mouthfeel  Big carbonation and medium in the body.

Drinkability  This wasnt bad, but certainly not worth picking up again.

Pours a bruised-apricot color with lots of dim, gold highlights - completely opaque and cloudy. Little, tiny buts of sediment hang suspended in the beer as if they were sitting in glycerin. Volatile as all hell, the head far outsizes the actual amount of beer in the glass as it towers over the top of the glass; off-white, foamy, and frothy as can be.

I bring this one to my nose and pick up much of what I expected from any decent tripel - lots of fruity, mildly earthy esters, faint banana, lemon and citrus zest, orange peel, spices, clove, and a raw Belgian yeast aroma, highly akin to bubblegum. As far as the aroma goes, this is definitely one of the more balanced tripels I've had. No smell is competing with another too much, and all of them collide at once to form a nice, meshed aroma. Alcohol provide a bit of a warmth, but nothing hot or troublesome.

The taste hits first with a nice collection of mellow fruits - some plums, mangoes, grape skins, light banana. The fruit comes with a nice sweetness that simply feels more mellow and laid back, rather than abrasive and in your face. A light dusting of sugar seems to cover everything. Some spices adhere well to the fruits, mainly clove and a bit of orange peel, followed by a nice mix of bread, butter, and gum - that Belgian yeast sure does wonders. Hop character is subdued but slightly leafy and herbal when it shows itself.

At first, I was getting a slightly undesirable aftertaste - something along the lines of cardboard, or wet, moldy wood. Left a bad taste in my mouth long after the beer was gone. As it started to warm, the fruit and malt sweetness got a bit stronger and this weird aftertaste vanished (or at least masked), so luckily I was able to enjoy the second half of my beer. Not sure what that was all about, but it least it only lasted for half the beer. Alcohol phenol flavors came out a little but upon warming, but didn't harm the beer in any way. Medium bodied with a light mouth feel thanks to aggressive carbonation.

Pretty good tripel, and it would be a great tripel if it wasn't for that strange moldy flavor I was getting at first. Good think it eventually recessed and went away. The second half was wonderful - if only the entire timeline went that way. Overall, still very good.

O - This beer is just fantastic. After reviewing over 3,300 beers, how did this ever elude me? Was certainly familiar with the beer, evidently I never had it before when I thought I did. A timeless Classic - recommended.

L- pours a light yellow with 2 inch forming head.
S - grass, lemons, pear, smells creamy
T - So this is not at all my favorite style of beer but this is definitely a creamy triple - completely covered alcohol and really smooth. I get banana bread with heavy creamer baked into the little noted yeast. This is not what I would call a classic belgian triple because it's so good!
F - Like mentioned above, this is creamy good, great balance
O - this may have opened my eyes to the style I never thought I could enjoy. a very good beer

on tap at the bull and bush, they have really put in a lot of guest taps recently, including a lot of higher end belgian stuff, very cool. this is one of the classics, a great example of the style, and one of my personal favorites because of its relative lack of sweetness compared to its peers. hazy and very pale straw in color, with a smaller head than i was hoping for, but still close to an inch of lasting white airy foam. it smells floral from the yeast, like little white and purple meadow flowers, and a rather high dose of oats along with the wheat and barley in the grain bill. lots of body and just a touch of residual sugar. long grainy start turns into a dry yeasty finish, classic belgian yeast fruit esters pop all over the place, and prickly carbonation makes 8% abv feel dangerously light. its a classic recipe, a classic yeast strain, and a real artisan product that is rooted in tradition and timeless in flavor. this is one of my favorites because of its dryness. it doesnt sacrifice any body to get there either. light fruitiness is left on the tongue after the swallow, and a 750ml of this would not be too much for me in a sitting.

Poured a hazy peach color with a huge blooming (almost to much) head that consumed the whole beer now a fluffy head on top of a Belgian tripel is nice but this went a bit overboard.I notice a little funk in the aroma like a saison in some ways with its mentioned funk and peppery spice with just a light note of citrus,quite spicey on the palate cloves coriander and black pepper really come thru with an underlying candi suger elemant.A nice creamy mouthfeel lended itself well to this brew.A nice tripel but I have had better the Witkap tripel I had just yesterday to me was more broad and enjoyable,all in all not bad but to me not worth the hype.

Pours yellow-to-slightly orangish with a ¾ inch white head that dissipates after about two minutes to an ultra-thin film. Chalky yeast persists near the bottom of the glass as mild carbonation makes its way to the surface. The nose is slightly tropical and fruity but really quiet tame. Apricots and toffee make up the bulk of the taste while mild phenols roll over the tongue. Very, very drinkable. Smooth and mild.

APP- This beer was the classic glowing gold color that I expect tripel to be. Only a very slight haze, with a noisey, foamy white head that fell quickly and left a little lace.

AROMA- Fresh grain, spice, very floral, low malty sweetness, orange zest, white grape, pear... I could go on, very complex but delicate and in balace. Nothing more than moderate in intensity.

TASTE- Firmly malty but well attenuated base with light grahm cracker character. Low level detectable noble hop flavor and minimal bitterness combine with complex spicey character to balance. I could swear I caught a hint of banana but difficult to latch onto. Esters are very low in the mix.

MOUTHFEEL- Appropriately dryish but maintains medium-light body . High carbonation is appropriate but has more of a fizzy/ stingy character and not so much the mouth-filling creaminess I'd like.

OVERALL- One of the more complex tripels I've had and by far the best St. Bernanrdus beer I've had. Very dangerous in its drinkability.

A- Pours a beautiful ripe orange colored fluid with an evenly hazed glow in sunlight. Tight bubbles make of a nice frothy head that leaves a mildly rounded lacing on the glass.

S- Fresh citrus fruits come to mind oranges, tangerines, and lemon. Sweet candied sugar and alcohol esters fume in the back of the nose.

T-M- Like the smell the taste does nothing but prove the excellence of this Tripel. Flavors include overripe fruits of citrus nature, musty malts, alcohol esters and tangy Begian yeast. Mouthfeel is chewy with a lingering yeasty thickness that allows the flavors to dance and roll over the tounge. Creamy finish with nothing but excellence from beginning to end.

D- I love this beer! I could drink this one every day if my cash flow allowed. Great complexities, smoooth and an alcohol content that would keep you grounded. Cheers!